Knowing tonight was the State of the Union address, the kids and I did some studying up on the history of the speech. We read about the history of the speech on the PBS Web site, and watched C-SPAN for an hour or so ahead of the main event. From those sources we learned George Washington delivered the first 'annual message of the president' in 1790.
When Thomas Jefferson became president, he didn't like the speech. He thought it too 'royal,' and so in 1801, he sent a letter rather than address congress. For the next 100 years, other presidents followed suit. President Lincoln's 1862 letter contained "last best hope" message to Congress.
In 1913, Woodrow Wilson went back to the ways of old, delivering his annual message in a speech to Congress. It wasn't until 1945, with Franklin D. Roosevelt, that the address became know as "The State of the Union."
The speech was first broadcast on the radio in 1923 (that was president Calvin Coolidge), and the first televised State of the Union was in 1947 (President Truman). Historically, the speech had been given during the day, but in 1965, Lyndon Johnson shifted to an evening event, to attract a larger television audience.
The first time the annual speech was postponed was in 1986, because on the morning of the scheduled event, the shuttle Challenger exploded shortly after lift off.
We watched tonight's speech, and afterward, I found a transcript online. We copied and pasted it into the free word cloud program Wordle, and pasted the text in, producing the graphic at the top of the page.
YESTERDAY ONCE MORE: Yesterday's blog was full of photos from this weekend, to the exclusion of photos from our Monday fun.
We saw some pretty camellias on a walk around the top of Queen Anne hill.
PRODUCTION LINE: The kids have a Valentine exchange on Friday, and they need to bring 50 cards apiece with them. I showed them some fun homemade Valentine ideas from Pinterest. Annabelle decided she liked a bee-themed one, so we printed out the bodies of the bees and the kids got started cutting those out today.
HALFWAY THERE: Today, we listened to a total of four lectures for our astrobiology class through Coursera. Most of them had to do with the habitability of Mars.
In the first lecture, "Habitability," we learned that in order for a planet to be habitable for life as we know it, it has to have a source if liquid water, a source of energy, a source of elements (nutrients) and physical conditions that are within the boundaries which life can exist.
We learned that the habitable zone of a solar system is planets that are neither too close nor too far from the star. And in order for a planet to be habitable, there has to be an active geochemical turnover, or ongoing energy supply, and the physical conditions need to be relatively stable over a long period of time.
In "Search for Life on Mars," we reviewed how people have speculated about Martian life in the past - and how often they were terribly wrong. We also learned more about the early Viking probe experiments on the surface of the Red Planet.
In "Mars as a Location for Life," we learned about Mars' three Epochs, or time periods. They were Noachian, when there were many meteorite or comet impacts, and abundant water covered the planet; Hesperian, when there were lots of volcanic eruptions and the water on the planet became acidic; and Amazonian, the time when there were no longer any standing bodies of liquid. We also learned that Mars does have many of the six key elements required for life. There's carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, phosphorus and sulfate. However, as far as we know, the planet lacks nitrogen. (Maybe MSL will find some!) And there seems to be no geotechnical turnover right now (no exploding volcanoes, no plate tectonics). Presently, many think the most likely place to find life on Mars will be in the subsurface. No wonder MSL has been drilling!
The fourth lecture was intriguingly titled "Could we all be Martians?" It talked about Panspermia, or the theory that life exists throughout the universe and it was distributed by asteroids, meteoroids and planetoids.
In order for life to be transferred from one planet to another, it has to be able to withstand being launched from the planetary surface, survive the journey through space, and survive the atmospheric entry.
WANT: We read a story online about a girl who sent her Hello Kitty doll to the edge of the atmosphere. Talk about the ultimate science experiment. The kids and I sooo want to do this! .
Love the SotU graphic. as well as the history of the speech.
ReplyDeleteRe a space shot First pick a launch site that makes vehicle retrievable possible